love bite

UK, US/ˈlʌv baɪt/

noun

A bruise on the skin caused by someone sucking or biting it, usually with sexual intent.

Meanings

nounlove bite (plural love bites)

plural love bites · alternative lovebite · alternative love-bite

  1. UKA bruise on the skin caused by someone sucking or biting it, usually with sexual intent.

    Easy girls and late nights / Cigarettes and love bites / Why do you have to be so cruel?

    1983, “Bad Boys”, in Fantastic, performed by Wham!
    4 more examples

    Then the turtle-billing kisses, and the poignant painless love bites, which they both exchang'd in a rage of delight, all conspiring towards the melting period

    Fanny Hill

    1749, [John Cleland], “[Letter the Second]”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], volume II, London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC, page 63

    And when my teeth the poignant love-bite try, / Thine should return the painless poignancy.

    1797, Jean Bonnefons, Belinda; or, The Kisses of Joannes Bonefonius of Auvergne, London: G[eorge] Kearsley, s. XXXI (in imitation of Secundus's Basia), page 123

    […] with first a scarlet slash of tongue to cheek, he seized her hand between his teeth and dented the soft skin with a love bite that did not hurt.

    1917 April, Jack London, Jerry of the Islands, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC

    ‘Gee! You ever notice the bloody big love bites on some of those sheilas that work in the Store?’

    1982, Paul Radley, My Blue-Checker Corker and Me, Sydney: Fontana/Collins, page 70

    Synonyms: hickey, monkey bite

Synonyms & antonyms

nounA bruise on the skin caused by someone sucking or biting it, usually with sexual intent.

More synonyms by meaning

nouna temporary red mark on a person's skin resulting from kissing or sucking by their lover

Similar
Broader

Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.

Cite this entry
APA

love bite. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/love%20bite

MLA

“love bite.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/love%20bite. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “love bite,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/love%20bite.

Source: love bite on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.